United Kingdom, 2006

First, I would

like to pay tribute to the work of the Secretary-General.

A former British Minister once said of the NATO

Secretary General that he should be more of a secretary

and less of a general. Kofi Annan has been more of

everything: more of a diplomat, more of a reformer and

more of a moral voice of leadership in the world.

In a world shattered by conflict, the founders of

the United Nations saw that only by coming together,

united in support of larger freedom, could we build our

shared future. Today, when the world’s nations are

even more interdependent than they were in 1945, what

does it mean to stand, as they intended, united? At one

level it means taking action when things go wrong,

where there is an actual breakdown of security or a

descent into violence or chaos. Today in particular, the

United Nations faces the challenges posed by multiple

upheavals and crises across the world.

In the Middle East the United Nations is playing

a vital role in establishing stability in southern

Lebanon. Troops from the European Union are

deploying alongside those from the Middle East, Asia

and Africa. All Member States must meet their

obligations under Security Council resolutions 1701

(2006), 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), if we are to

enable Lebanon to be the proud, democratic and

diverse nation that its people want it to be.

But we are all aware that this most recent conflict

in Lebanon had its roots in the continuing failure to

achieve a just solution to the Palestinian question. That

is why the United Kingdom has consistently argued

that there can be no higher priority than reinvigorating

the Middle East peace process.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Al-Maliki’s national

reconciliation plan can help leaders from all

communities come together. At this crucial juncture,

we must all intensify our support. The International

Compact provides the right vehicle. It allows the Iraqi

Government to set its own vision and shows us how we

can help turn that vision into a reality.

In Afghanistan, real progress has been made, with

the United Nations taking a leading role in

coordinating the international effort. But real

challenges still lie ahead. NATO’s task of securing the

south of the country is far from easy. Soldiers from

many NATO countries, not least my own, have given

their lives to provide a better future for the people of

Afghanistan. The Afghan Government and people, too,

want security, development and good governance. The

United Kingdom and the international community are

determined to help them to achieve them.

We must show a similar shared determination in

urging the Government of Iran to address international

concerns over its nuclear ambitions and its support for

terrorism. The proposals put forward by Britain, France

and Germany with China, Russia and the United States

offer a path for the Iranian Government to develop a

more constructive relationship with the rest of the

world and give Iran’s talented population the

opportunities and prosperity that is their right,

including, if they wish, a modern nuclear power

industry. We want to be able to resume negotiations.

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Iran knows what is required, and that the alternative is

increasing isolation.

Darfur remains in crisis. I pay tribute to the

efforts of the African Union and its peacekeepers.

Wednesday’s decision to extend their mandate averted

a security vacuum. We must now strengthen the force

of the African Union Mission in the Sudan. But it can

only be a temporary reprieve. We also need action

immediately on the political and humanitarian front.

Those who have not signed the Darfur Peace

Agreement must do so. Those who have must abide by

its provisions.

To underpin that Agreement, we urgently need a

greatly strengthened international presence on the

ground, with the active engagement and support of

Asian and Muslim, as well as African, countries. That

is why the Security Council authorized the deployment

of United Nations peacekeepers to Darfur. I urge

President Bashir to extend the Sudan’s relations with

the United Nations in a common purpose to bring

lasting peace and genuine stability to the whole of the

Sudan. It is, above all, his responsibility.

The security challenges the world faces are real.

As an international community we must deal with

them. But standing united also requires us to take up a

second, deeper level of global responsibility, namely,

tackling the underlying problems that promote conflict

and underdevelopment. We must strive to promote

sound global values and to build multilateral systems

within which nations and individuals can cooperate,

co-exist and each achieve their potential.

Many representatives to the Assembly have

already spoken of the need to accelerate progress

towards the achievement of the Millennium

Development Goals. Progress on those Goals is a moral

imperative rooted in a concern for, and an

understanding of, our common humanity. But it is also

a political imperative, because there will be no stability

and security in our global community while so many

millions of men, women and children in that

community face only a life of hunger, poverty,

inequality and disease.

The same is true for those whose lives are

shattered by conflict or blighted by injustice. The

Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights

Council are new structures that give us new

opportunities and new impetus. At the same time, we

must see a step change in efforts towards an

international arms trade treaty that will end the

irresponsible transfer of arms that fuel conflict and

facilitate the abuse of human rights. That is why the

United Kingdom, with six other countries, will

introduce a draft resolution in the First Committee to

establish a process to work towards a legally binding

treaty on the trade in all conventional arms.

Collectively, we have a responsibility to protect

human life and a duty to defend the international

institutions that help us as a community to achieve that

goal. The answers lie not in division or in personal

attacks, but in the earnest and consistent pursuit of

justice and peace.

Our collective responsibility to each other is

nowhere more evident than in the huge challenge posed

by climate change. The British Prime Minister, Tony

Blair, made climate change one of our two G8

priorities last year, alongside poverty reduction in

Africa. When the Prime Minister appointed me as his

Foreign Secretary, in May, he specifically charged me

with putting climate security at the heart of our foreign

policy. We will not solve that problem if we do not

each assume our share of the responsibility for tackling

it. Nobody can protect themselves from climate change

unless we protect each other by building a global basis

for climate security. That goes to the heart of the

United Nations mission, and the United Nations must

be at the heart of the solution.

To put it starkly, if we all try to freeride, we will

all end up in free fall, with accelerating climate change

the result of our collective failure to respond in time to

that shared threat that faces us all. Look just at the

danger posed by rising sea levels. Potentially, that

could cause massive damage to some of the key urban

centres of our global civilization. London, Shanghai,

Dhaka, Singapore, Amsterdam, Cairo and, yes,

Manhattan are all at risk. That is why we must all — as

foreign ministers, heads of Government and heads of

State — be ready to do more, and do it more quickly.

Our climate presents us with an ever-growing threat to

international security. Dealing with climate change, by

both adapting to what is now inevitable and acting to

avert still greater damage, is no longer a choice, it is an

imperative.

We need common commitment and genuine

action. We must all be ready to find a way to get the

agenda moving beyond Kyoto. The Gleneagles

dialogue meeting in Mexico at the beginning of

21 06-53317

October will be one such opportunity, a chance for

developed and developing countries to work together

on that shared problem.

If we do not act now, an unstable climate will

undermine our progress in all those other areas that

matter to us, not least the Millennium Development

Goals themselves. Take one of the most basic needs of

all, water. Already perhaps two fifths of the world’s

population finds it hard to get the water they need. At

the same time, many in the world rely on affordable

energy to help lift themselves out of poverty — and,

indeed, perhaps to give them access to that water. But

there is a dilemma: if we provide affordable energy by

burning fossil fuels, we accelerate climate change. That

means further disrupting water supplies. For some

people who now have plenty of water it will mean new

shortages. For those who already have little, it will

mean less. In turn, everywhere less water means less

food.

Let me give a specific example of that dilemma.

The whole world, as well as the Chinese people, is

benefiting from the great success of the Chinese

economy. No one in China or elsewhere wants that

growth to stop. But it is based, in China as elsewhere,

on a rapidly increasing use of the fossil fuels that are

creating climate change. Yet China is a country already

vulnerable to climate change. The Chinese Government

knows that as the Himalayan glaciers melt and

agricultural land shrinks, crop yields will fall, fresh

water will become more scarce and the economy itself

will suffer, and with it the world’s economy.

All the nations of the Arctic Circle are being, and

will be, affected by melting permafrost, with

disruptions to infrastructure and to investment. The

Vice-President of Palau has just given us a vivid

description of what the environment means for his

nation. We all share, to a greater or lesser extent, that

same dilemma. If we do not act on climate change, we

risk undermining the very basis of the prosperity and

security we are seeking to achieve. That is why we

must recognize that talk of having either a successful

economy or a stable climate is a false choice. We must

work together to find paths for economic growth that

will protect our climate. The truth is that we already

have much of the technology we need to move to a

low-carbon economy. But we must now deploy it very

much more rapidly. What we do in the next 10 years

will count the most.

The former chief economist of the World Bank,

Sir Nicholas Stern, will shortly publish one of the most

significant and wide-reaching analyses so far of the

economic impacts of climate change itself. One of the

key emerging findings of his work is that while it will

not cost the Earth to solve climate change, it will cost

the Earth, literally as well as financially, if we do not.

Moreover, if we learn to tackle climate change

together, we have an opportunity to build trust between

nations and to strengthen the multilateral system. But if

we get it wrong, that trust will be further eroded. It is

the developed, rich world that bears a large

responsibility for the present level of greenhouse gas

emissions, but it is the poorest in our global

community — those least able to bear it — who will

bear the brunt of climate insecurity. We all need to do

more. But the rich world should of course continue to

lead the effort, applying the principle of common but

differentiated responsibility, which must continue to be

our guide. In the joint endeavour which the United

Nations represents there can be no more stark or more

urgent warning than that.